***spoiler alert***
Updating Hitchcock is always a tempting and daunting task, in every moment, it seems. The temptation is, i suppose, easy to understand: Hitchcock's movies exist in a world of film. His stories (even when adpated from cheap novels) are always tailored to his camera, his camera to his eye, and his eye to his brilliant visual intuitions. In terms of narrative, his "stories" are always a game which invites several players on screen to participate, and always you, the spectator. But the secret is never in the facts of the story, never in the words, but in the image itself, in the movement of the camera. His camera is much more attached to character than, say, Welles', but much less than Scorcese's. Space plays a role, tells a story, the story is (admitedly) a McGuffin, in itself a useless device, that nevertheless grabs us. The game has the rules the storyteller defines, and once we the spectator enter it (that should happen even as the initial credits are still rolling), we don't have the possibility Not to play.
Now we have Oriol Paulo updating Hitchcock. So far his best student had been De Palma, and for the moment it will remain in that spot, at least to me. But some things are interesting.
Paulo understands the spliting of the space of the action. First we have the apartment room, overlooking the street, windows (eyes) on the other side. Remarkably old fashioned in its decoration, and even the objects (pen, chronometer, lighter, etc) are oldfashioned, a blink to Hitchcock's age. In the apartment the game is between the lawyer who must extract the truth from the ambiguous client and the client, whose sincerity (or lack of it) we don't get.
The telling, re-telling, correcting and speculating of the story of what happened is where things get interesting. Through flashbacks we leave the room, and almost in Rashomon fashion, we watch over and over again the same bits of the important sotry elements. Who's right? Who's lying? Who is playing us, the audience? Most of those flashbacks are clumsy in how they are shot, they don't breathe well, they don't sit well in our ability to constantly re-create and change the memory of past events. That's a cinematic flaw. Most of the tension that we feel In the apartment room is gone when we move to the mountain roads or the hotel. I suppose that Hitchcock's feel of tension is often achieved through the physical limitations of the spaces where we are (think Vertigo, Rear Window, Rope, Strangers on a Train...) and thus the moutain, the open space of the flashbacks (with the obvious expection of the Kubrickan hotel) just won't do it. Where this also falls apart is in the main actor. He is so weak that the ambiguity of HIS character which should be central to this game is lost. He reveals everything as he thinks it is in each moment. Hitchcok never required a great deal out of his actors in order to make his films work, but he did need at least that they didn't get in the way. In a certain way Casas's character is the self-designated manipulator of the events, at least the character thinks he is. ***BIG SPOILER*** But he justs allows us to think too much, and follow the true master manipulation (the director of the apartment scene, whom we find out to be the fake lawyer).
Anyway this is a relatively mechanical tale of suspense (tension through camera, expectaction, space), with bits of a game of spies (who is who, the biggest manipulator wears literally a mask). The sense of noir is all around, the sense that we are being played around, the coincidences (that the father of the dead kid is the one who picks up a co-conspirator). I want to see more of this director, this one is a nice exercise, i want to see him taking risks, i hope he does.
Now we have Oriol Paulo updating Hitchcock. So far his best student had been De Palma, and for the moment it will remain in that spot, at least to me. But some things are interesting.
Paulo understands the spliting of the space of the action. First we have the apartment room, overlooking the street, windows (eyes) on the other side. Remarkably old fashioned in its decoration, and even the objects (pen, chronometer, lighter, etc) are oldfashioned, a blink to Hitchcock's age. In the apartment the game is between the lawyer who must extract the truth from the ambiguous client and the client, whose sincerity (or lack of it) we don't get.
The telling, re-telling, correcting and speculating of the story of what happened is where things get interesting. Through flashbacks we leave the room, and almost in Rashomon fashion, we watch over and over again the same bits of the important sotry elements. Who's right? Who's lying? Who is playing us, the audience? Most of those flashbacks are clumsy in how they are shot, they don't breathe well, they don't sit well in our ability to constantly re-create and change the memory of past events. That's a cinematic flaw. Most of the tension that we feel In the apartment room is gone when we move to the mountain roads or the hotel. I suppose that Hitchcock's feel of tension is often achieved through the physical limitations of the spaces where we are (think Vertigo, Rear Window, Rope, Strangers on a Train...) and thus the moutain, the open space of the flashbacks (with the obvious expection of the Kubrickan hotel) just won't do it. Where this also falls apart is in the main actor. He is so weak that the ambiguity of HIS character which should be central to this game is lost. He reveals everything as he thinks it is in each moment. Hitchcok never required a great deal out of his actors in order to make his films work, but he did need at least that they didn't get in the way. In a certain way Casas's character is the self-designated manipulator of the events, at least the character thinks he is. ***BIG SPOILER*** But he justs allows us to think too much, and follow the true master manipulation (the director of the apartment scene, whom we find out to be the fake lawyer).
Anyway this is a relatively mechanical tale of suspense (tension through camera, expectaction, space), with bits of a game of spies (who is who, the biggest manipulator wears literally a mask). The sense of noir is all around, the sense that we are being played around, the coincidences (that the father of the dead kid is the one who picks up a co-conspirator). I want to see more of this director, this one is a nice exercise, i want to see him taking risks, i hope he does.